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If the suggestion is therefore that TOK encourages creativity, I'd personally stamp on that with a massive steel-capped boot and then some. In my totally honest opinion, TOK shows people who've never considered them before truths that either would have occurred to some of us already, or never bothered us, and then gives us a prescriptive format to somehow 'measure' how good we are at using the IB's format to talk about them in an uninformed and disjointed manner. I say uninformed and disjointed because we basically have to write an essay about how essentially we aren't sure what truth is and actually we probably don't know as much as we thought we did if you asked us to define it. Then again I'm definitely in the anti-TOK camp, I thought it was a ridiculous waste of time. True, you don't have to learn anything really because there's no exam, but you can't have strict criteria for anything and then say it encourages creativity and free thought. It reduces those people who did have creativity and free thought and confuses people who wouldn't otherwise bother. Perhaps for some people it hits the spot because they'd not considered it before but were open to it, but those people are definitely an IB minority.

Personally I am of the opinion that any education system which has exams is automatically going to be low on creativity simply because creativity takes time and doesn't necessarily always hit all the criteria. I've sat in some classes where the teachers thought they'd be creative and (although I admit I'm a reasonably cynical person so perhaps it's just me to some extent) found the whole thing a waste of time when we're short of time and all I needed was to be told the material for the exam. They don't give marks for anything else. Even the 'design' section of science IAs is bogus.

However I think that the IB does try in some respects. Not TOK (which I have already covered as a waste of space), but the method of questioning does encourage creative thinking a lot more than other courses. For instance, my school was mostly A-Levels and a small minority IB students and whilst we often covered similar things, they would have a format like...
Part A) find out quantity X
Part B) find out quantitiy Y
Part C) convert quantity X into blah
Part D) what do you know about blah which would change quantity X?
Part E) how much do you get if you add quantity X and Y together (final quantity P)?

Whereas the IB is more like...
Question 1) Find out quantity P.

So it leads you through less and does make you think creatively to some extent because you have to use the information and apply it yourself, rather than be guided through every aspect. It's also harder because of that -- you could've been able to answer parts A-D, but whereas in A Levels you'd gain 4 marks for that, in the IB you'd get sod all, maybe 1 or 2 marks, unless you got P at the end.

I don't think the IB's very good at 'actual' arts. IB music, drama, art etc.  seem to me to be a lot about theory and less about expressing yourself or going outside the box.

Generally I would say school kills creativity. I mean, I think I'm reasonably creative but at no point have I ever been able to express that at school, anything I do is something I do for pleasure in my own time. On the other hand I don't think you can have an objective education system which DOES value creativity.

The only 'creative' thinking I did in my whole school career is probably what I'm weirdly most proud of and that is my Extended Essay. The only part of anything I've ever done where you had to use your initiative and think things through yourself, creatively, even if it's within quite a narrow field. The EE criteria are excellent. If they could stick the EE into A Levels, it would be the ultimate course

I'm not sure. There are 12 topics under the Americas option, I believe, and the range from the colonization period til present day, so it'll really depend on which topics your teacher chooses to teach.
We had three years of IB history planned out [including a preIB year]. The first year, we covered 1492 til Reconstruction after the Civil War. Then the next year, we picked up from where the last teacher left off and we ended in the 1960s. All the material was with a focus on the US. Then the third year, we took a more worldly perspective about causes and events of WW1 & 2 and the interwar period and the Cold War and we discussed the events that led to the rise of Hitler, Mussolini, Castro, the Russian Revolution and Civil War and Lenin and Stalin.

I wouldn't read up on 20th century stuff right now.
I'd say the the bulk of material took place during the 1900s.
We didn't touch Canadian history and most of Latin American history, so our teachers made sure they covered most/all of the US history topics we'd see.